


Fears of a Feather

by Listless_Songbird



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Maybe? im not exactly sure what this is, Wings, fanart welcome!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-07 01:44:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20301394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Listless_Songbird/pseuds/Listless_Songbird
Summary: What the wings of the avatars must look like, if they ever choose to have them.





	Fears of a Feather

The Vast

\- The Vast have wings of storm. Clouds gather behind them roiling with the promise of lightning and a horizonless sky. On clear days the wings fade to only the splitting branching patterns of lighting pulsing out from their shoulders. The wings never even have to beat in order to rise off the ground, they merely spread wide and joyfully return to the ever present openness of the waiting Vast. 

The Buried

\- When the entombed are born again, deep beneath the press of earth, the weight of the world settles down upon their shoulders. It sinks deep into their bones in a rapturous connection to the soil around them and wings that form themselves are made of stone, dirt and roots. And through them pulse the searing hot of blood made of molten iron. The beat of these wings could never force any of the Entombed into flight, never break their ties to the ground humming beneath their feet. Instead the thunderous shock waves stir up earthquakes from the earth, sending more people to join them down, down, down, under the broken crust of soil. 

The Flesh

\- As the marrow seeps out the bones of those who chose the path of sculpted flesh, they begin to warp and pull far beyond the base limitations of a bone-bound body. And from their back burst forth their wings in a bloody rending of flesh. Never fully completed, never perfect, (although some on the path do attempt to fix them) their wings sag and ripple with a feigned heartbeat and shape themselves like bat wings. They are far too heavy to do anything except drag along the ground behind their chosen, soft and malleable flesh cutting open on chunks of gravel and bushes. Bleeding slow, molasses thick blood in their wake. 

The Corruption

\- Puss and maggots ooze dripping from bloody wounds in wings so tattered and broken the sheer image of them leaves all but the Hives contaminated by sight alone. Each beat of the wings spread inflection surging through the air around them, the breeze whistling through worm holes and rotted gouges, poisoning and defiling anyone it touches. At first it may be a cough, a headache, a bloody nose, but the song of becoming one with those who love you will have already burrowed deep deep within where even maggots falter and few have ever resisted their song for long. 

The Hunt

\- Wings of the Hunters are sleek, efficient, and vicious. Tipped with sharpened teeth and bones permanently coated in dried but ever dripping blood. Feathers well cared for, in peak condition but never pampered in their care. Function valued over form every time. 

\- There is rarely any prey that cannot be caught on foot with the thrill of the chase singing in their blood but if the occasion arrises Hunters switch from sprint to flight effortlessly, pushing forward faster and faster till the wind whips like knives bring their blood singing to the surface leaving no thoughts behind except the Hunt.

The Spiral 

\- These are not wings. They cannot be because the space where they are never quite exists in the way it should. Air currents twist to fractals and unfurl in a rush but they cannot be wings as defined as vehicles of flight because they are attached to an Impossibility and Untruths do not have tangibility enough to generate the spirals that pull and shape reality to fit the Being that it chose. But no matter the guise the wings are not as such and cannot rend and tear reality, time and bones in their wake. 

The Dark

\- The wings that seem to bleed and and spread through the air behind the Creatures of the Pitch are more void than substance. The sunken Dark drains at the reality around it, pulling it in and consuming it leaving it tainted as the wings shift and move. 

\- The creatures do not fly. Instead they warp and sink into the shadows of their wings until all thats left are the fears and secrets only whispered softly in the dead of night.

The Web

\- Wings of the Weavers are built, not shoved out suddenly at their rebirth adding further complications to these beings who already need to relearn the world around them. No, the Web would never allow for one of theirs to be so untrained as to appear coltish. 

\- And so the wings are built. Thread by thread, web layered over Web until by the time the Weavers fully choose their paths, wings float along behind them. Far taller than their human guise but so thin they can be folded close, tucked down along the spine.

The Lonely 

\- Spilling out fog and chill behind them the Forsaken wear their wings with pride. Impossible to resist the draw of them poor forgotten souls are swept away with a brisk beat of wings. Feathers of glass and ice passing through grasping fingers leaving only wounds behind. 

\- The wings never begin as glass. They start as beautiful and resplendent as an angels wings but as the years and victims pass without remark upon the spectacle of them the luminosity crystallizes into nothing but pain, abandonment, and the impression of a sharp toothed grin.

The Slaughter

\- The Slaughter’s wings beat to the sound of a far off drumbeat growing impossibly faster with every passing breath without ever changing tempo. The wings are made of the rusted razor sharp blades collected from the corpses of fallen allies and enemies alike. Held together with the curling twists of gunpowder the blades spark like flint and the blast of fury and fire drive them to the skies. 

The Stranger

\- The Stranger do not have wings of their own. They borrow, take, create what they desire. Never in the formless sagging of the Flesh but instead in patchwork wings of quickly fading gossamer thread, fog, blood, and gunpowder or anything else they find. The wings never stay for long, the Strangeness of them barely enough to stabilize the incongruity enough to even exist and so they are ever changing, in constant flux held together with the promise of old friends you’ve never met.

The Desolation

\- Feathers are very flammable. One spark and they’re up in burning embers leaving nothing but soot behind. But for the Ever Burning the ashes of the spark point flames condense with the scream of a damned soul and begin to grow anew. Phoenixes born and born of the destruction of all they used to be. Fires embers and destruction follow in their wake, only taking the most precious of items to be added to the screaming ashes of the broken. 

The Eye

\- The Beheld are rarely seen with their wings unfurled, tucked carefully along their spine they are built to See, not to be Seen. If some unlucky souls are naive enough to speak of their secrets and stories to the ones who watch with hungry eyes they will find themselves among the Known. In dreams with nothing else to see and know but the truth of what this place is they bear witness to the awful glory of a canopy of Eyes overlapped and blinking in ripples, a mockery of beating wings. The paper feathers weep tears of black ink that burn and draw to the surface memories best forgotten. 

The End

\- The wings of those who sought the End and passed through don’t have form, don’t have shapes. They don’t have anything but a presence observable only in reaction to the instincts to survive, to continue. But once they are spread wide, mantling over the doomed harbored beneath them their true shapes are fully realized. The horrible and terrifying visions of them given, like a gift, only to those who would never tell a soul again. 

The Extinction

\- There are no wings. If there were you could not understand. You should not understand. You will cease and discontinue and there will be no wings in the new world without you. 


End file.
